Google Places Ranking Factors - A Study

I read an article by Andrew Shotland last night entitled Google Places Ranking Factors, and just wanted to share it with all the newcomers to WebProWorld.com who are wondering or searching for this kind of information.

The following is my favorite quote from the article (as an interesting nugget) cause I've sensed this all along and have done it every time.

The presence of a business description did not help ranking, although having the search category in the business description did help ranking.

If the following conclusion is true, I'd say this information is quite useful:

Getting your 5th Google review significantly helped ranking, although incremental reviews between 1 and 4 and above 5 had a very small impact on ranking (you have to get 100+ of reviews for it to help ranking any more than just 5, so good news for much-loved businesses and review spammers).

How are your or your clients' Google Places listings doing? Have you had problems? How did you overcome them?

I am certainly happy to hear that the number of reviews has only a slight impact on the serp results, although in my niche, the majority of the businesses that are ranking high have 50+ reviews. I've always thought that the number of and the content of reviews is very difficult to fake, and if a potential client spots them, you've lost their trust and business forever. As a result, I've always kept my reviews clean by refusing to spam fake ones.

The problem is that Google Places is becoming more and more like Yelp with their filter. I see some good reviews getting filtered all of the time, and it bothers me because my competitors' fake ones oftentimes remain unfiltered (quantity over quality). I am just glad that the reviews don't impact the search results as much.

Here in Australia you need about 5 reviews to get the gold stars, so that's something to acquire even just for the emphasised listing.

I found here, in Canada, with one client that for a hard campaign, 3 reviews made a big change. They were virtually no where and in conjunction with an on-going SEO campaign, their places reviews brought up their Places page to #1.

I am certainly happy to hear that the number of reviews has only a slight impact on the serp results, although in my niche, the majority of the businesses that are ranking high have 50+ reviews. I've always thought that the number of and the content of reviews is very difficult to fake, and if a potential client spots them, you've lost their trust and business forever. As a result, I've always kept my reviews clean by refusing to spam fake ones.

When Google Places wasn't Google Places just yet, I gave myself a review in the form of a site announcement - I was testing around and that one self review (same email address as the Places owner) gave me positive results. Interesting isn't it...

I found here, in Canada, with one client that for a hard campaign, 3 reviews made a big change. They were virtually no where and in conjunction with an on-going SEO campaign, their places reviews brought up their Places page to #1.

I have a further question, does Google places take count the IP distance, different place will show different SERP. Something like Google map in mobile phone, the GPS will search the nearest restaurant or business services.